Editing Digital Equipment Corporation (section)

==== Video and Interactive Information Server ====
The [[video-on-demand]] project at DEC started in 1992, following Ken Olsen's retirement. At the time the company was rapidly downsizing under Robert Palmer, and it was difficult to gain funding for any new project. DEC's Interactive Video Information Server architecture gained traction and excelled over those of other companies, in that it was highly scalable, using a gateway to set up interactive video delivery sessions on large numbers of video and information servers. Initially high-end VAXes were used, then Alphas.<ref>{{cite press release|title= Digital Equipment Corporation Enters Video-on-demand Market|date=October 19, 1993|publisher=Digital Equipment Corporation|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/1993-10-19/digital-equipment-corporation-enters-video-on-demand-market}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|publisher=IGI Consulting, Inc|title=Video Dialtone & Video-on-Demand, Market & Technology Assessment Study|date=1994|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bPlY3VCWdyUC}}</ref>

In 1993 the DEC video-on-demand design team developed a system with a session gateway between the users and a large number of servers. The system was successful in winning video-on-demand trials at US West and other companies. Shortly after the first patent was filed,<ref>{{cite patent| country = US| number = 5414455 | status = patent
     | title = Segmented video on demand system
     | fdate = 1993-07-07
     | gdate = 1995-05-09
       | invent1 = Donald F. Hooper
     | invent2 = Matthew S. Goldman
     | invent3 = Peter C. Bixby
     | invent4 = Suban Krishnamoorthy
     | assign1 = Digital Equipment Corporation
}}</ref> the session gateway and session gateway and server concept was released to the public domain and proposed in the early Digital Audio Visual Council and [[MPEG-2]] international standards deliberations, with approximately 50 companies attending. The architecture was accepted and voted into the final standards. 

In 1993 the design team further developed a media client buffer design that used receive-side buffering for media streaming with read and write pointers. This enabled VCR-like features pause, fast forward, and rewind to be performed at the user's device, e.g. cellphone or laptop, even before the full video was downloaded. This enabled more servers to be allocated to the system, as these features did not always have to be performed at the servers.
<ref>{{ cite patent| country = US| number = 5442390| status = patent
     | title = Video on demand with memory accessing and or like function
     | fdate = 1993-07-07
     | gdate = 1995-08-15
     | invent1 = Donald F. Hooper
     | invent2 = Matthew S. Goldman
     | invent3 = Peter C. Bixby
     | invent4 = Suban Krishnamoorthy
     | assign1 = Digital Equipment Corporation
}}.</ref>
 
In 1995 the system, renamed the "Video and Interactive Information Server", was upgraded with the capability of providing exponentially more video and information access using a hierarchy of session gateways, session gateway proxies, and servers.<ref>{{cite patent| country = US| number = 5671225 | status = patent
     | title = Distributed interactive multimedia service system
     | fdate = 1995-08-01
     | gdate = 1997-09-23
     | invent1 =  Donald F. Hooper
     | invent2 = Dave M. Tongel
     | invent3 = Michael B Evans
     | assign1 = Digital Equipment Corporation
}}</ref>
 
With this 1995 Video and Interactive Information Server design, 333,000 streams were provided by [[US West]] to set-top box users,<ref name= "VOD2SCALE">{{cite book | first=Daniel | last=Minoli | title=Video Dialtone Technology | year=1995 | page=233}}</ref> and was used by Adlink to distribute advertising to over two million subscribers.
<ref>{{cite press release|publisher=Digital Equipment Corporation|title=Adlink selects Digital to implement new video ad insertion system|date=January 11, 1995|url=http://www.digital.com/info/PR003R/PR003RSC.TXT|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19961220125337/http://www.digital.com/info/PR003R/PR003RSC.TXT|archive-date=December 20, 1996|url-status=dead}}</ref> The DEC video-on-demand patents portfolio has been cited over 350 times. A [[Google]] search in 2025 asking performance improvement of computers from 1995 (the date of this invention) to 2025 yielded 100-1000x performance increase, depending on the usage. Assuming the conservative value of 100x performance, the DEC Video and Interactive Information Server would be able to supply 33 million streams in 2025.

The scalability feature allowed it to win contracts for many of the [[Video on demand#History|trials in the 1993-97 timeframe]], since the system could theoretically accommodate an extremely large amount of video streams and other non-video content.<ref name= "VOD2SCALE"/><ref>{{cite book|editor-first1=Borko |editor-last1=Furht |title=Multimedia Technologies and Applications for the 21st Century: Visions of World Experts|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|date=November 30, 1997|doi=10.1007/978-0-585-28767-6 |isbn=978-0-585-28767-6|url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-585-28767-6}}</ref>

The design was proposed and incorporated into the [[MPEG-2]] international standard (finalized in 1995).
<ref>{{cite ISO standard|csnumber=25039|title=ISO/IEC 13818-6:1998 Information technology — Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information — Part 6: Extensions for DSM-CC}}</ref> Its [[Object-oriented programming|object-oriented]] interface became the mandatory user-to user core interface in [[DSM-CC]], widely used in video stream and file delivery for [[MPEG-2]] compliant systems, and was carried forward to [[MPEG-3]] compliant systems.